innocence in the fire
by cembree
Summary: As he lay under the sweet warmth of Lyra's body and the stifling heat of his insomnia, Proton realized how their romance had endured so well. Cannonshipping: HGSS verse.


When he first met her at the Azalean well, her meganium was a quivering bayleef, and she a mere child. The details of that day remain engraved in his head, the serenade of screaming slowpoke as clear as crystal.

This slight, juvenile girl…he could have easily strangled her and left her for dead by the side of the well. And yet, there was some indescribable magnetism about her that forced his distance. Even then, Lyra simply _radiated_ power, a sort of power Proton hadn't seen since before Giovanni forsook Team Rocket. It shone from her eyes and the lute of her voice, apparent in the trajectory of every pokeball and the devotion of her pokemon.

Proton followed power in the same way a venomoth sought fire—unconditionally, with complete disregard for the dangerous licking of the flames. He remembered being eleven, prowling the streets in the dead of night. _Complimentary pokemon for all new recruits_ , the Rocket poster read. Originally he planned to collect his new mon, work the minimum number of days required, and then leave, but all it took was one speech of Giovanni's smooth baritone voice, laced with promises of a world filled with glory and riches and unlimited wonder, to trap him.

And now, nearly a decade later, that Boss was gone and Team Rocket a mere shadow of its former glory, what reason did he have to stay?

Archer tried his best, bless his soul (not really), but he amounted to nothing more than a weakling playing dress up, forever incapable of mustering that same force field of charisma which so successfully wove Team Rocket into the fabric of their society. Petrel remained too tied up in the trappings of the past, eternally chasing after long lost pipe dreams. As for Ariana…he had always hated the bitch, vain and unsatisfactory in every manner. Lyra possessed more energy in one tiny finger than they did in their entire bodies. They already outlived their primes; Proton still dwelled in the pinnacle of his youth.

So when he saw Lyra a year later, victorious against yet another Gym Leader, he could no longer resist her.

"They're planning to kill you," he told her quietly, "but I will save you."

* * *

He always found it funny how they all assumed that it was he, the big bad villain, who seduced the sweet rustic girl from New Bark and swayed her to his side. _Good girls like bad boys_ , or something trite like that, even though her era of girlhood had long since passed.

 _"So now, how did you win the champion over?"_

 _"When did you realize you loved him?"_

 _"Is this a permanent thing, Ms. Lyra?"_

 _"Are you sure you don't like Gold more?"_

Stupid, inane reporters, always butting their heads where they didn't belong.

Was Lyra really a good girl? No, she really wasn't. None of her was bad, that was for certain, although she hardly fit the bubbly pure archetype most young female champions were inevitably pigeonholed into.

As he lay under the sweet warmth of Lyra's body and the stifling heat of his insomnia, Proton realized how their romance had endured so well. Only a few months had elapsed, but their liaison promised a future of romantic couplings and terse double battles.

Lyra was pleasant and she was mischievous, but she was also callous and heartless. (Really, anyone who shared his sense of humor qualified as at least that.) He hesitated to call her cruel, for she possessed that infernal inability to resist the calls of help which always came her way. Regardless, he could have never tolerated someone sappy and sensitive and hung up on the insignificant details of life, and she could have never flourished with someone who demanded she dwell in saccharinity and regrets and melancholy.

Lance, her former regent, warned of nightmares and haunted flashbacks that attacked during the most mundane of times. The smell of recently exploded electrodes still brought forth memories of carnage and burnt human flesh, he told her, and it had been years since he stormed the booby traps of the Fuschia Gym in the first fight against Team Rocket. The Blackthorn scion even recommended her his therapist. It turned out she hadn't needed much therapy at all. Everything unfortunate and gruesome which struck her was another learning opportunity, one she would pore over and analyze until she was certain she could always overpower it. She'd endured a lot (Proton knew, because he was responsible in some way for half the shenanigans and present with her for the other half) and her reign was still green, but it was uncanny how easily she slept at night.

Proton remembered each of the other newly crowned champions they'd met. He'd always had an eye for people and their various little idiosyncrasies, and adolescents in particular wore their lives on their sleeves.

Red, fresh off the slopes of Mt. Silver and only a few years older than Lyra, stood taciturn and unmoving, his soul buried deep within a shell from which few could retrieve him. As he shook Proton's hand, his eyes flashed with visceral recognition—they never battled, did they? —and he engaged only Lyra for the duration of their encounter. Vibrant Dawn pretended happiness and youth, but the trembles of her hands and the bitterness in her voice betrayed her internal turmoil. Snuffing the life out of Team Galactic—and she felt obligated to do no less—took its toll on her body and mind. Brendan alone seemed unaffected, which wasn't surprising. Team Aqua and Team Magma weren't real villains, only misguided environmentalists who missed the day in class when everyone learned not to fuck with the powers that be, and regardless, the boy had an entire family of parents and traumatized team executives to commiserate with.

Yes. Lyra was blessed with innocence. That was the best way to put it. These things just never stuck to her for very long. She was unflappable, and she was forward-looking, and she was strong.

* * *

Lyra's mother always said that she was fine with Proton, that all that mattered was that he and Lyra were happy. Proton knew better. He pretended not to notice how his mother-in-law hesitated to hand his own children to him after a day of babysitting, or the way she swatted at his perfectly still crobat when she thought he wasn't there. (Fine, the entire zubat line were bloodsuckers, but his crobat was uncharacteristically agreeable and maternal and loyal and always well-fed.)

Lyra's father said nothing, and Proton didn't care if he did. The man had been absent for much of his daughter's life, so anything he wished to contribute was irrelevant. Instead, Lyra returned from a trip to her parents with a brand-new handgun.

"From dad. Something about if you ever tried stuff," she said with an eloquent eye-roll.

Proton felt tempted to tell his father-in-law that if he truly wanted to harm Lyra, that puny firearm could do nothing to stop him. No, that would be a horrible joke to crack.

* * *

"How does it feel, oh cruelest and scariest man in Team Rocket," Silver asked, "to be nothing but a trophy husband now?"

"Great," Proton replied drily.

Like mother, like son. Silver and Ariana were as different as water and oil, but they both hid their emotions under life-like masks and posed taunting, piercing questions that slid under Proton's skin, although years of Ariana's sneers and jabs had groomed his defenses so that her son could evoke nothing more than mere amusement.

Silver never liked Proton very much. Granted, his feelings towards his father's employees, with the exception of bitterness towards his mother, never exceeded mild disdain (indifference, on a good day) before Team Rocket's disbanding, but now he was positively frigid towards the greenhead when they were alone. Jealousy, Lyra speculated with mock exasperation. If she had married anyone else—Ethan, Red, even Lance—Silver would have tolerated it and quickly resigned himself to the fact, but his contempt for Team Rocket ran deep and made the ensuing match even more intolerable.

Proton honestly didn't have much of an opinion about Silver. He tended not to become too committed to opinions. People were very capricious, after all, and he could certainly have fun with someone he disliked. He knew his wife was mildly fond of the redhead, now one of Johto's Dexholders, citing Silver as "fun" and "sarcastic", and that sufficed. If Silver did open up at all, he was worth giving a chance.

"How's your dex?" Proton finally asked, more out of politeness than curiosity, when the silence grew unbearable.

"It's fine, thank you."

As they sat and waited for their one mutual connection to return with the food, the former criminal pondered upon his companion's words. Silver did have a point, even if said point was communicated with an intention to insult.

Lyra defined his life. She took on his last name upon their marriage, as if to assure him of his role in their relationship. It served as little more than a formality. In this stage of his life, he was a trophy husband, even if he advised her in her champion duties, and angry, ambitious eleven-year-old Proton would have looked on in horror.

But twenty-two-year-old Proton thanked whatever deity reigned up there (maybe Ho-oh; Ho-oh did deign to appear at their wedding) with his lot. He thought of his fellow executives and former subordinates, rotting away in jail or slaughtered in the carnage of the team's final dissolution. They could laugh and mock him all they wanted, although it mattered very little. He loved Lyra and their children, and he enjoyed the perks of their social status. (Besides, Lyra was still young and cared to hear his opinions about governing the region, and it wasn't as if he didn't have a large stash of funds safely sequestered away.) Under Lyra's tutelage, he'd begun to understand pokemon, and his golbat finally evolved. Besides, it wasn't as if cruel, scary Proton had completely died.

For cruelty came in many allotropes, and living well inflicted a pain deeper than any act of violence or desecration could.

 **AN:** Playing HGSS, and getting into cannonshipping. A quickwrite ft. my feelings on the ship.

The Proton I wrote is less evil and more of an adaptive and tries-to-end-up-on-the-winning-side sort of figure. Definitely has a mean streak, but has a soft spot for Lyra and mellows out with time away from Team Rocket. As for Lyra...rereading, I see that she can be interpreted as sociopathic which is up for interpretation. I'm not particularly fond of the good girls like bad boys trope. It's much more reasonable for something to be up on Lyra's end, something that would prompt her to allow a former criminal (who's done shady things) in her life so easily.

Age wise...Lyra is definitely aged up. I don't really subscribe to the idea of quick Pokemon journeys (as shown through the 80 day challenge in the manga, and the hours count on Pokemon Origins), since the whole process of taming Pokemon and mastering battling should take a long time (longer, if you're not the protagonist of a pokemon game). While Lyra might have started her journey at 10 years old, I imagine she could have spent the first bit of her journey focusing solely on pokemon training and then started collecting badges. She would have been at least in her mid teens when she became Champion, and Proton would be a few years older than she.

Assumed Silver was Ariana's kid. The resemblance is uncanny, and it'd explain why there's no motherly presence in his life. I can't see Ariana having much time or heart for her kid(s)-definitely not enough to override Silver's disdain for Team Rocket.

Any comments/reviews/feedback are 100% welcome and appreciated.

Made some edits: originally gave Lyra a cyndaquil under the stipulation that the champion will always have a starter weak to their rival's, and Silver is traditionally associated with totodile. Thought about this headcanon more, and decided it really didn't matter that much, so I changed it to the chikorita line that Lyra is traditionally associated with.


End file.
